The manufacturer of the S-100 Camcopter rotary wing uncrewed aerial system (UAS), Schiebel, will have to scale back operations in Australia if decisions about military UAS capabilities are not taken soon.
The S-100 is the only UAS operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) by the experimental 822X squadron, which has six aircraft. These are providing a wide area surveillance capability for the RAN and also serve as a way of de-risking new technologies and payloads that could have uses in maritime security operations.
However, Fabian Knechtl, the managing director of Schiebel Pacific, told ADM that its existing contract to support those aircraft from Australia runs out in July 2024 and he has been given no assurances that this would be renewed. After this time the RAN would lose all the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) support making it difficult to continue their operation beyond the short term.
Furthermore, the decision by the Australian department of defence to stop the award of a sole-source contract –under the now defunct Project Sea 129 Phase 5 Block 1 – for the company to provide between 20-40 S-100 systems has meant that its plans to expand personnel and supply chains in-country have had to be dropped.
“We have very little information on exactly why this was stopped,” Knechtl said, “the constant answer we have [from Defence] is that they don’t know what they want.”
Knechtl explained that the anticipation of the Sea 129 Phase 5 Block 1 contract was the reason why the company had established the Schiebel Pacific subsidiary as a local hub, hiring staff and transition training from overseas and set up local supply chains to meet Australian Industry Capability requirements.
He believes that it is likely there will be a gap in naval UAS capability after the surface fleet review is published. Sea 129 Phase 5 Block 1 was intended for a period of five years, so an interim capability will be needed to get to the original Block 2 stage of the project, which was anticipated to go to a competitive tender for a new platform.
In the meantime, Schiebel is continuing to support the RAN’s existing six aircraft. The S-100 is being used to investigate the viability of using different payloads including sling-load operations, LiDAR, mine countermeasures and anti-submarine warfare. Both Schiebel and the RAN have invested time and effort in developing a UAS team in 822X Squadron with a newly created remote pilot rotary UAS warfare officer role.
But with the contract running out on 1 July 2024, Knechtl said “the situation is a bit unpleasant”.
He added: “At the moment the outcome of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and the surface fleet review, its biggest impact is uncertainty not just for Schiebel, but many others suffer. They are really hurting us, especially Small to Medium Enterprise (SMEs). They can’t keep doing this to companies.”
The publication of the surface fleet review and the presentation of the government’s decisions and its outcome is not expected until early in 2024. The S-100 was planned to be used primarily from the Arafura-class Offshore Patrol Vessels, but the future of this programme is in doubt and new ships could be purchased instead.
However, because of the delay, Schiebel has already lost employees due to job insecurity that could impact the existing S-100 UAS training programme as the loss of subject matter experts are difficult to replace. It takes a year to train a remote pilot and to become an instructor.
Whilst there have been some informal preliminary discussions about follow-on contracts to sustain the current S-100 fleet Knechtl said that “anything other than a follow-on sustainment contract would be a big disappointment and would have a big impact about the future of our local entity.”
Schiebel Pacific has been in Australia since 2016 and the company is now looking into expanding its commercial activities including providing services to help combat firefighting disasters and emergency situations.
“If I would have time with the Minister or government my message would be that everyone is saying you need to be aware that you are really hurting industry,” Knechtl said.